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2013 Distinguished Business Achievement award winners and finalists.

We would now like to take this time to announce
our 2013 Distinguished Business Achievement award winners and finalists.

This award honors the top IBM Business Partners
from each region. IBM Business Partners considered for these award
significantly impact IBM Collaboration Solutions' (ICS) position in the
marketplace and are considered rising stars amongst their peers.

For North America the finalists are: CDW
(USA) ; Mainline
Information Systems (USA) ; Prolifics
(USA)and the winner is: Prolifics. Prolifics,
headquartered in New York, with offices throughout North America,
Europe and Asia had a
stellar year in 2012 with significant year-to-year growth.
Their success can be attributed to their dedication to meeting the
unique needs of each customer. They have secured
new marquis accounts by honing their skills to deliver complete
solutions that leverage both the IBM Platform for Social Business and
IBM WebSphere Portal capabilities.
This has allowed their customers to realize the benefits of both a
smarter workforce and increased customer satisfaction. Prolifics
has the sales and technical expertise to create and close deals in
any size account. They have increased overall marketing efforts and
invested time and money in local territories to generate demand,
progress the deal and go for the close. It is with great satisfaction
that we award Prolifics the Distinguished Business Achievement Award for North America.

For Latin America the finalists are: Masterdom
Consultoria e Informática (Brazil)
; MEVE
Soluciones, S.A. de C.V. (Mexico) ;
Synopsis
S.A. (Peru)and the winner is:Masterdom
Consultoria e Informática (Brazil). Since
1988, in the Brazilian market, Masterdom has been a certified IBM
Premier Business Partner working with large companies from various
sectors of the economy, with special emphasis in government.
Masterdom has been showing year-to-year growth, especially in 2012.
They have contributed a 30%
year-to-year growthselling
almost all our IBM Collaboration Solutions products, including
Sametime Unified Telephony.
They have sponsored Social Business Roadshows to generate new leads
leveraging the SWG Co-Marketing program. They have also invested
in the General Business market segment by hiring a few sales
people. We expect Masterdom to continue to play an important role in
continuing to influence major deals in Brazil in 2013.It is with great satisfaction
that we award Masterdom the Distinguished Business Achievement Award for Latin America.For Asia Pacific the finalists are: ISW
Development Pty Ltd (Australia) ; Lyv
Connections Pte Ltd (Singapore) ; Startin
Point Pte Ltd (Singapore) and the winner is:ISW
Development Pty Ltd (Australia). ISW
is an Australian IBM Premier Business Partner that has significantly
grown their year on year IBM cross-brand revenue. ISW has been a
worldwide
thought leader in the adoption and usage of IBM Connections
and in particular released the award
winning Kudos Badges for IBM Connections in 2012.
Kudos Badges has had a major impact with IBM Connections customers
around the world including Sogeti, CEMEX, Leaseplan, Dr Reddy’s
Laboratories, Cochlear Ltd., and many others. ISW's cloud offering
around IBM Connections has helped to drive new sales of IBM
Connections internationally and ISW's extensive knowledge across the
IBM Collaboration Solutions solution set enables our joint clients
take advantage of the full range of Collaboration and Social Software
capabilities. ISW has also continued to invest significantly in ICS
focused marketing initiatives such as the ISW
Ignition for IBM Connections campaign.
ISW has grown its national team and opened a new office in Brisbane
to add to the existing Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart locations. ISW
is working towards adding an Adelaide office in 2013. ISW
won the Tasmanian Government IT Export Award primarily
for the development and export of ICS focused solutions.It is with great satisfaction
that we award ISW the Distinguished Business Achievement Award for Asia Pacific.For Japan the finalists are: Kanematsu
Electronics Ltd ; RicohIT Solutions ; SCSK
Corporationand the winner is:Kanematsu
Electronics Ltd.Kanematsu
Electronis Ltd. (KEL), based in Tokyo Japan, experienced a great
success with the launch of Social Business in 2012. KEL
started with using IBM Connections internally, then they gained some
valuable experience implementing Social Business in the enterprise,
such as "how to make the end-users leverage social" "how
to make the executives agree to buy IBM Connections”, "how to
start with a successful adoption plan”, "how to stay engaged
throughout the deployment”, and they provide these professional
services to help their clients be successful. The
KEL's "Business Social Starter Pack” is a starter kit for
brand-new social users,
including IBM Connections licenses, virtual machine installation,
demonstration, training, and consulting services which helped
brand-new IBM Connections clients to become a Social Business. KEL
captured a lot of great opportunities from their Social Business
Seminars throughout the year. They came through delivering some
deals which will be published as IBM Connections case studies next
year. KEL
is the most important Social Business provider in Japan
and will lead with Social business and IBM Collaboration Solutions
for the next decade.It is with great satisfaction
that we award KEL the Distinguished Business Achievement Award for Japan.

For Europe the finalists are: ASI
Informatique (France) ; ATEA
(Norway) ; GIS
AG (Germany)and the winner is:GIS
AG (Germany).The
solution GIS
Collaboration Center (GCC) integrates the most important products of
the IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS) portfolio to a software
appliance that is installable within three days
and from then on ready to run customer projects and productive
environments. GIS has just launched their latest
version of GCC based on IBM WebSphere Portal 8 and IBM Connections 4.
In
Germany GIS is partnering very closely with other Business Partners
to sell their GCC Portal-based solution. This capability gives GIS a
unique selling point and much shorter sales cycles. GIS is very
proud of many new customers this year and many of them are migrating
to the new release in the next 2 months!

GIS
also provides their GCC
solution as an ASL Cloud solution
as well and has been partnering with SugarCRM and Ascendant
Technology. The SaaS model has been fully implemented and deployed
and is proving to be a successful business model. This is a very
cutting-edge, and future-oriented approach addressing the cloud space
in a very smart manner. It is with great satisfaction
that we award GIS the Distinguished Business Achievement Award for Europe.

For Central and Eastern Europe the finalists
are: CROZ
(Croatia) ; Qumak-Sekom
(Poland) ; Softline
(Russian Federation)and the winner is: Softline(Russian Federation). Softline,
has been in the Russian software industry since 1993, and is
currently
one of the leaders in the RCIS Information Technology (IT) sector.
It conducts business in 23 countries (65 cities) and counts more
than 2000 employees worldwide. Softline
has
been
one of the top IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS) Business Partners
for the last 5 years, experiencing
extraordinary business growth in 2012 for Central and Eastern Europe.
Softline's primary business objective is to deliver high impact
solutions for their customers' business needs leveraging their
information technologies know-how and experience. Over the years,
working with industry leaders and many other software vendors, they
clearly
understand the technological trends and have sharpened their vision
of the future success of information technology.It is with great satisfaction
that we award Softline the Distinguished Business Achievement Award for Central and Eastern Europe.

and the winner is:KnowledgeDimension(South Africa).Knowledge
Dimension specialises in solutions which enable organisations to
provide exceptional Web experiences for all stakeholders, both
internal and external, and to encourage innovation by taking
advantage of social networking opportunities on offer.

An
IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS) Business Partner since 1991,
Knowledge Dimension is recognised as a market leader by IBM and was
the first South African company to win a prestigious Lotus Beacon
Award in 1997. Knowledge
Dimension is an end-to-end service provider of solutions and services
spanning IBM Notes and Domino, and all the collaborative technologies
in the ICS solutions portfolio, including
IBM Connections, Web Experience, and has enabled, and continues to
enable, organisations to maximise their human capital potential and
deliver real business value and return on investment.

Since
making a strategic
decision to move into the IBM WebSphere Portal 3 years ago,
Knowledge Dimension has assigned people specifically to cover ICS and
doubled in size and experienced license revenue and margin growth in
excess of 500% by subscribing to, and taking advantage of, the
various IBM programmes on offer. Today
Knowledge Dimension is positioned as a strategic ICS Business Partner
whose
value-add is recognized not only by IBM, but also by the client base
who experience working with them. Due to their expertise and
business drive IBM is recognising Knowledge
Dimension as the market leader
as endorsed by our 'IBM Distinguished Business Achievement Award' at
IBM Connect 2013. Knowledge Dimension is no stranger to this award
as this would be the second time they win it, their first time win of
this prestigious award was at Lotusphere 2011. It is with great satisfaction
that we award Knowledge Dimension the Distinguished Business Achievement Award for Middle East and Africa.

Comments (2)

Hi Deborah
Thanks very much!
Please note that the click-through to the Knowledge Dimension web
site doesn't work - it is in as http//www.kdimension.co.za' - as
you may notice there is no colon after 'http' and before the
forward slashes.
Could you please fix this?
Thanks!
Gary Swale
Director: Business Development
Knowledge Dimension
+27824482694